Received: by zonker.hpl.hp.com (1.37.109.8/15.5+ECS 3.3+HPL1.1) id AA22913; Mon, 16 Oct 1995 02:59:51 -0700 Date: Mon, 16 Oct 1995 02:59:51 -0700 From: Ken Poulton <poulton@zonker.hpl.hp.com-DeleteThis> Return-Path: <poulton@zonker.hpl.hp.com-DeleteThis> Message-Id: <9510160959.AA22913@zonker.hpl.hp.com-DeleteThis> To: wind_talk@zonker.hpl.hp.com-DeleteThis Subject: AWIA show
--------------- Sat 14 Oct 95 - Ft Mason - AWIA show
Michael and I went to the AWIA show. I met a bunch of folks I had only
talked to on the phone - esp. Bard and Bill Sistek of Windwing.
I went over to beat up Nevin Sayre of Fiberspar about the continuing
problems with their booms. He took my beating patiently (asked if I was
Kirk) and explained the whole sordid saga of their boom problems. The
latest problem is (as usual) in the aluminum tube that is molded into
the platic part of the head. It gets bent to the front-end angle and
then its ends are swaged down to a smaller diameter to fit the boom arms
before the molding process. It seems that some parts are coming from
the manufacturer in Taiwan with the swage performed off-center, leavng a
weak spot in the tube. This makes booms with this defect weaker, but
hard to detect because the molding is already done in Taiwan. They
think the percentage is small, and have now come up with an incoming
inspection process to catch them, but they seem to have figured this out
only recently.
The other new thing that Fiberspar is doing is replacing boom heads
on broken booms. Up to now, if you had an in-warranty failure,
ASD just handed you a new boom out of stock. Now they have to send it
in and the process takes at least two weeks (mine is 4 weeks and counting).
If you have this done out of warranty, it costs $65. That, at least,
beats buying a whole new boom.
The other interesting development in booms was from Dynafiber. I have
always hated spring button booms - I find them painful to adjust
and prone to jamming. Dynafiber found that they were the weak point
of their carbon booms - in a hard crash, sometimes the buttons would
"zip" through several holes, even if the boom arms didn't break.
Their new adjustment scheme is based on compressing rubber stoppers
attached to each end of the boom's rear end piece. The compression is
done by cables controlled from a knob all the way at the back. It
seemed to be strong and easy to use.
I grilled the Dynafiber folks on reliability and their president claimed
less than 2% warranty rate and only one boom-head failure on any of
their booms, ever. Nevin later pointed out that they are using the same
boom head, and suggested the reason for so few failures was that
Dynafiber's volume was only a few percent of Fiberspar's, but from the pile of
booms for repair at ASD, it looked to me like Fiberspar's warranty rate is
more than 10-20%. So the marketing war of words rages on.
In general, it was a good show and I liked talking to all the manufacturers.
Also, Saturday looked like a good sailing day. I missed it - who got out?
Sunday was a bust unless you drove to Rio.
Ken Poulton
poulton@opus.hpl.hp.com-DeleteThis
"Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest
way of selling goods, particularly if the goods are worthless."
-- Sinclair Lewis
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